XII 
ART AND NATURE 
159 
Roberts, the well-known artist, who was with us, painting 
the head of a very Jewish-looking boy, surrounded the 
whole time by an admiring crowd. He made a splendid 
study of his model, who had an ornament of feathers stuck 
in his woolly head and a big scarlet hibiscus in his ear-ring. 
It is the men here who decorate themselves with flowers 
and make themselves beautiful, while the women carry 
the loads and do most of the hard work. Just as the 
forty-guinea finishing touches were being put on the 
picture, the whole thing fell, butter side downwards, 
into the sand. It looked hopeless, but next day the 
oils had dried, and we carefully wiped off the sand, after 
which it was retouched, and looked as well as ever. 
The natives here are a fine-looking race, stout and 
well made, their sleek shiny bodies look well nourished, 
and, indeed, so they are, for on their fertile island they 
have not even the trouble of growing most of their food, 
which is in abundance everywhere, and consists of fish, 
yams of several kinds, dugong, turtle, pigs, fowls, 
bananas, melons, papaws, cocoa-nuts, and several other 
kinds of native fruits. We watched a young boy 
catching a gray sea-gull with a small fish-hook made 
* of shell and stuck into a fish as a bait, which the bird 
greedily swallowed. 
The sea along the shore every here and there 
was thick with sardines. Two men with long 
bamboos drove them together to a point, and at the 
right moment a third dived quickly down with a conical- 
shaped basket and filled it before they had time to get 
under the sticks. Several large sharks came swimming 
into the breakers after them, the fish jumping in 
hundreds out of the water as they came near, and we 
watched the chase going on until the black line was lost 
in the distance. The women were bathing close by quite 
heedless of one shark whose fins above water showed 
